A report from 2009, from KnowledgeWorks called 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning caught my attention. It identifies six major drivers of change that might unleash a wild world of learning quite unlike any system of schooling we’ve ever experienced. What I’m finding is that it’s increasingly a story-driven game that places students at the center of their learning experience, much like an MMORPG. In any case, the singularity is one narrative I imagine will drastically alter what it means to be a student interfacing with a world undergoing ecological and economic shifts.

In the section called Altered Bodies we’re reminded that neuroscientists have begun to design neuro-enhancements that might soon provide “customized learning experiences” that push the boundaries of ethics and cognitive rights. Learners are forecast to have “more and more options for modifying their minds and bodies in support of peak performance even as they navigate increasing levels of bio-distress.” I’m reminded of what H.G. Wells would say is urgently needed to prevent our own extinction, “the evolution of a new more powerful type of man.”

Jamais Cascio, affiliate at the Institute for the Future and a senior fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, writes of how we’ll need to get smarter as a species if we are to survive the next several decades. But this time, he adds, “we don’t have to rely solely on natural evolutionary processes to boost our intelligence.”

He turns our attention to breakthroughs in genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, as means for “intelligence augmentation,” or what he calls “You+.” This form of “technological evolution” has more to do with how we manage and adapt to the immense amount of knowledge rather than responding to the physical world.

“We can call it the Nöocene epoch, from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the Nöosphere, a collective consciousness created by the deepening interaction of human minds. As that epoch draws closer, the world is becoming a very different place.”